Top 6 Dieting Mistakes Newbies Make
You don’t have to be new to low-carb diets in order to make one of these 6 dieting mistakes. They are just as common among those who have been dieting for a while. That’s because as time goes on, we tend to become more relaxed in the way we implement our personal carb-restriction programs, and forget what’s most important. So whether you’re new to the low-carb lifestyle or have been journeying for months, here are the top 6 dieting mistakes you’ll want to avoid.
This mistake cannot be stressed highly enough, because it’s the foundation for the low-carb myth that the Induction Flu is about detoxing from carbohydrates or sugar. It’s not. When you begin a low-carb diet, the body loses most of its glycogen stores. Since there’s 3 or 4 grams of water attached to each gram of glycogen, you’re going to lose a ton of water in the first few days. That will throw your electrolytes out of balance.
Electrolytes are your calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium levels in the body. They have to remain balanced in order for you to feel well. When you lose a lot of water, sodium and potassium are flushed out of the body. If you’re eating most of your Atkins Induction carbohydrates in the form of vegetables, potassium levels will probably be replaced, but if you’re not heavily salting your food, you’re going to get dehydrated. That will make you feel sick, nauseated, and give you other flu-like symptoms.
If that happens, simply up your salt intake, and you should begin to feel better right away.
If you’ve been reading posts on several of the low-carb diet forums, or have been following some of the high-profile low-carb blogs, you might have heard about the latest tend called Nutritional Ketosis. The way these individuals have implemented Nutritional Ketosis is to reduce their protein intake to just above, or just below, the protein intake the body needs to repair itself. What they're doing, is limiting their protein intake, so the body doesn’t convert their excess protein to glucose to feed the brain.
Those following this type of low-carb lifestyle have been dieting for quite a few months or years now, and have stalled part way to their goal weight. They are using this reduced-protein plan to try and kick-start their weight loss. If you’ve just starting a low-carb diet, you don’t want to limit your protein. Until you adapt to the state of ketosis, your brain needs 120 grams of carbohydrates in order to function daily. Although the body can convert the protein you need into that glucose, if you don’t eat enough for your liver to do that, it will pull the amino acids from your muscles instead.
Lyle McDonald, in The Ketogenic Diet, recommends you eat a minimum of 150 grams of protein for the first three weeks, until the brain adapts to using ketone bodies for its energy needs. Once the body switches to using fatty acids and the brain begins to use ketones for fuel, your glucose requirements will go down. As that happens, protein requirements drop as well.
However, there isn’t a set amount of protein that works for everyone. Most low-carb specialists trained in nutrition recommend about 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass you have. That’s especially true if you’re following any type of exercise or weight-lifting program, so use that as a guide, and then adjust it later on, as needed.
We tend to enter into dieting, any type of dieting, with the mindset that we have to eat less and move more in order to lose weight. While that’s true, the first three to four weeks of a low-carb diet are not about losing weight. It’s about coaxing your body to switch from predominantly burning glucose for fuel to burning fatty acids and ketones instead. You don’t do that by eating less food. You do that by making your body feel secure.
One of the top complaints I hear from beginners is that they’re hungry. This will generally happen once the body begins to run out of glycogen – the storage form of carbohydrates. As your glycogen levels go down, the body will begin to demand you replenish them. It does that by kicking up your hunger quite a bit.
When that happens, eat enough zero-carb foods to satisfy your appetite. Yes, you’ll be eating a lot of calories, and a lot of food until your body makes the switch, but you can worry about portion sizes later on. Generally, this excess hunger only lasts for a day or two because most people who follow a low-carb diet find their hunger significantly goes down once they enter the state of Ketosis.
Until that happens, don’t be afraid to eat!
I see this problem quite a bit too. People use the misinformation they see on the web to create their own personalized low-carb diet plan, and then can’t figure out why they are not losing weight. So far, all of the people who have given me sample diet meals to analyze have been eating foods that are not typically eaten during the beginning of a low-carb diet.
Fruit and nuts seem to be the largest offenders, but if you’re sensitive to wheat or gluten, low-carb foods such as low-carb tortillas and breads, Atkins shakes and bars, or other low-carb products can prevent you from entering the state of Ketosis. So will typical low-fat diet foods. Take the time to learn which foods are acceptable on a low-carb diet, and which foods are not.
While a carb is a carb, and there’s nothing magic about which foods you actually choose to eat, provided you stay within your own personal carbohydrate level of tolerance, low-carb programs are designed to help the body quickly lower its insulin levels. Meat, eggs, cheese, and vegetables is the fastest way to do that. Granted, a half a cup of cooked rice and 2 cups of cooked vegetables will provide you with about the same amount of glucose. But if you have Insulin Resistance or pre-diabetes, your body won’t react the same way to each of those foods.
There will be plenty of time later on to experiment. For now, it’s best to stick with low-carb foods.
Dr. Atkins recommended drinking at least 8 cups of water daily in order to help the body flush out incompletely burned ketone fragments. That’s about 2 quarts of pure water. However, most nutritionists and diet experts recommend you drink more than that. The current recommendation is to drink about one-half of your current body weight.
At 190 pounds, for me, that would be 95 ounces of water. Others recommend drinking 64 ounces, and then an extra 8 ounces for each 25 pounds that you are overweight. For me, that would be about 85 ounces or so. Whichever formula you choose to use, the important principle is that this is only talking about pure water. It doesn’t include your morning coffee, diet sodas, low-carb soft drinks, or tea. Just water.
You need the water to process your stored body fat. The liver uses it to break down your fat stores and convert those triglycerides into fatty acids and ketones. It doesn’t just flush them out of the body. If you don’t drink enough water, the liver will have to help your kidneys filter out excess toxins and other stuff that’s common in today’s food supply such as pesticides, rather than mobilizing your fat stores. You’ll feel tired, cranky, and weight loss will be extremely slow, and possibly even stop completely.
While it can be difficult to begin drinking water if you’re not used to it, water is as important to the body and fat-loss process as getting enough protein is. By nature, a low-carb diet is dehydrating, so make sure that you’re drinking enough.
Each low-carb diet program comes with its own rules. Whichever program you have chosen to follow, make sure you give the rules of that plan a chance to work before you begin tweaking your diet. Weight loss won’t be linear, and sometimes, the body freaks out if you’ve lost a large amount of water during the first week or two. That can cause fat loss to be masked. Don’t expect to see a lower number on the scale every week, and especially not every day.
For those who are brand new to the low-carb lifestyle, you’ll find this diet works extremely well. That’s because the body probably has never used this pathway before and there’s a large learning curve for it. That will give you a slight metabolic advantage over those who are not new to low carb, cause the body to mobilize more fat stores than it needs, and dump a ton of unused ketone fragments. You’ll be able to initially eat more, make several dieting mistakes without suffering any repercussions, and lose weight at a fairly quick pace. Often, much quicker than others.
However, it’s always extremely important that you follow the rules of your low-carb diet plan, because your body remembers your dieting patterns and prepares to protect itself against future famines. That means if you choose to leave the low-carb lifestyle and then decide to return to it later on, it won’t work as well as it originally did. There won’t be much of a metabolic advantage. While the program will still work, it will take longer and require much more effort in order to succeed.
So stick to your low-carb diet plan, move into maintenance during periods of turmoil or when you’re in a situation where you don’t have any control over what you eat, but expect the program to work more slowly when you return. It’s having the diet not meet our unrealistic expectations that causes most low-carb diets to fail. Follow the rules, and you’ll do fine. After all, this is a lifestyle change, not a diet.
Related Article:
21 Reasons You're Not Losing Weight on Low Carb
http://www.infobarrel.com/21_Reasons_Youre_Not_Losing_Weight_on_Low_Carb
1. Not Eating Enough Salt
 |
| Mistake #1: Not Eating Enough Salt (Photo by Casey Konstantin) |
This mistake cannot be stressed highly enough, because it’s the foundation for the low-carb myth that the Induction Flu is about detoxing from carbohydrates or sugar. It’s not. When you begin a low-carb diet, the body loses most of its glycogen stores. Since there’s 3 or 4 grams of water attached to each gram of glycogen, you’re going to lose a ton of water in the first few days. That will throw your electrolytes out of balance.
Electrolytes are your calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sodium levels in the body. They have to remain balanced in order for you to feel well. When you lose a lot of water, sodium and potassium are flushed out of the body. If you’re eating most of your Atkins Induction carbohydrates in the form of vegetables, potassium levels will probably be replaced, but if you’re not heavily salting your food, you’re going to get dehydrated. That will make you feel sick, nauseated, and give you other flu-like symptoms.
If that happens, simply up your salt intake, and you should begin to feel better right away.
2. Not Eating Enough Protein
 |
| Mistake #2: Not Eating Enough Protein (Photo by Daniel R. Blume) |
If you’ve been reading posts on several of the low-carb diet forums, or have been following some of the high-profile low-carb blogs, you might have heard about the latest tend called Nutritional Ketosis. The way these individuals have implemented Nutritional Ketosis is to reduce their protein intake to just above, or just below, the protein intake the body needs to repair itself. What they're doing, is limiting their protein intake, so the body doesn’t convert their excess protein to glucose to feed the brain.
Those following this type of low-carb lifestyle have been dieting for quite a few months or years now, and have stalled part way to their goal weight. They are using this reduced-protein plan to try and kick-start their weight loss. If you’ve just starting a low-carb diet, you don’t want to limit your protein. Until you adapt to the state of ketosis, your brain needs 120 grams of carbohydrates in order to function daily. Although the body can convert the protein you need into that glucose, if you don’t eat enough for your liver to do that, it will pull the amino acids from your muscles instead.
Lyle McDonald, in The Ketogenic Diet, recommends you eat a minimum of 150 grams of protein for the first three weeks, until the brain adapts to using ketone bodies for its energy needs. Once the body switches to using fatty acids and the brain begins to use ketones for fuel, your glucose requirements will go down. As that happens, protein requirements drop as well.
However, there isn’t a set amount of protein that works for everyone. Most low-carb specialists trained in nutrition recommend about 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass you have. That’s especially true if you’re following any type of exercise or weight-lifting program, so use that as a guide, and then adjust it later on, as needed.
3. Not Eating Enough Food
 |
| Mistake #3: Not Eating Enough Food (Photo by Lesley Show) |
We tend to enter into dieting, any type of dieting, with the mindset that we have to eat less and move more in order to lose weight. While that’s true, the first three to four weeks of a low-carb diet are not about losing weight. It’s about coaxing your body to switch from predominantly burning glucose for fuel to burning fatty acids and ketones instead. You don’t do that by eating less food. You do that by making your body feel secure.
One of the top complaints I hear from beginners is that they’re hungry. This will generally happen once the body begins to run out of glycogen – the storage form of carbohydrates. As your glycogen levels go down, the body will begin to demand you replenish them. It does that by kicking up your hunger quite a bit.
When that happens, eat enough zero-carb foods to satisfy your appetite. Yes, you’ll be eating a lot of calories, and a lot of food until your body makes the switch, but you can worry about portion sizes later on. Generally, this excess hunger only lasts for a day or two because most people who follow a low-carb diet find their hunger significantly goes down once they enter the state of Ketosis.
Until that happens, don’t be afraid to eat!
4. Not Understanding Which Foods Contain Too Many Carbohydrates
 |
| Mistake #4: Not Understanding Which Foods Contain Too Many Carbs (Photo by Sophie Jonasson) |
I see this problem quite a bit too. People use the misinformation they see on the web to create their own personalized low-carb diet plan, and then can’t figure out why they are not losing weight. So far, all of the people who have given me sample diet meals to analyze have been eating foods that are not typically eaten during the beginning of a low-carb diet.
Fruit and nuts seem to be the largest offenders, but if you’re sensitive to wheat or gluten, low-carb foods such as low-carb tortillas and breads, Atkins shakes and bars, or other low-carb products can prevent you from entering the state of Ketosis. So will typical low-fat diet foods. Take the time to learn which foods are acceptable on a low-carb diet, and which foods are not.
While a carb is a carb, and there’s nothing magic about which foods you actually choose to eat, provided you stay within your own personal carbohydrate level of tolerance, low-carb programs are designed to help the body quickly lower its insulin levels. Meat, eggs, cheese, and vegetables is the fastest way to do that. Granted, a half a cup of cooked rice and 2 cups of cooked vegetables will provide you with about the same amount of glucose. But if you have Insulin Resistance or pre-diabetes, your body won’t react the same way to each of those foods.
There will be plenty of time later on to experiment. For now, it’s best to stick with low-carb foods.
5. Not Drinking Enough Water
 |
| Mistake #5: Not Drinking Enough Water (Photo by Carnie Lewis) |
Dr. Atkins recommended drinking at least 8 cups of water daily in order to help the body flush out incompletely burned ketone fragments. That’s about 2 quarts of pure water. However, most nutritionists and diet experts recommend you drink more than that. The current recommendation is to drink about one-half of your current body weight.
At 190 pounds, for me, that would be 95 ounces of water. Others recommend drinking 64 ounces, and then an extra 8 ounces for each 25 pounds that you are overweight. For me, that would be about 85 ounces or so. Whichever formula you choose to use, the important principle is that this is only talking about pure water. It doesn’t include your morning coffee, diet sodas, low-carb soft drinks, or tea. Just water.
You need the water to process your stored body fat. The liver uses it to break down your fat stores and convert those triglycerides into fatty acids and ketones. It doesn’t just flush them out of the body. If you don’t drink enough water, the liver will have to help your kidneys filter out excess toxins and other stuff that’s common in today’s food supply such as pesticides, rather than mobilizing your fat stores. You’ll feel tired, cranky, and weight loss will be extremely slow, and possibly even stop completely.
While it can be difficult to begin drinking water if you’re not used to it, water is as important to the body and fat-loss process as getting enough protein is. By nature, a low-carb diet is dehydrating, so make sure that you’re drinking enough.
6. Not Following the Rules of Your Low-Carb Diet Plan
 |
| Mistake #6: Not Following the Rules of Your Low-Carb Diet Plan |
Each low-carb diet program comes with its own rules. Whichever program you have chosen to follow, make sure you give the rules of that plan a chance to work before you begin tweaking your diet. Weight loss won’t be linear, and sometimes, the body freaks out if you’ve lost a large amount of water during the first week or two. That can cause fat loss to be masked. Don’t expect to see a lower number on the scale every week, and especially not every day.
For those who are brand new to the low-carb lifestyle, you’ll find this diet works extremely well. That’s because the body probably has never used this pathway before and there’s a large learning curve for it. That will give you a slight metabolic advantage over those who are not new to low carb, cause the body to mobilize more fat stores than it needs, and dump a ton of unused ketone fragments. You’ll be able to initially eat more, make several dieting mistakes without suffering any repercussions, and lose weight at a fairly quick pace. Often, much quicker than others.
However, it’s always extremely important that you follow the rules of your low-carb diet plan, because your body remembers your dieting patterns and prepares to protect itself against future famines. That means if you choose to leave the low-carb lifestyle and then decide to return to it later on, it won’t work as well as it originally did. There won’t be much of a metabolic advantage. While the program will still work, it will take longer and require much more effort in order to succeed.
So stick to your low-carb diet plan, move into maintenance during periods of turmoil or when you’re in a situation where you don’t have any control over what you eat, but expect the program to work more slowly when you return. It’s having the diet not meet our unrealistic expectations that causes most low-carb diets to fail. Follow the rules, and you’ll do fine. After all, this is a lifestyle change, not a diet.
Related Article:
21 Reasons You're Not Losing Weight on Low Carb
http://www.infobarrel.com/21_Reasons_Youre_Not_Losing_Weight_on_Low_Carb
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